Heritage Health - Walnut

On top of receiving an elite overall grade, this nursing home received an A+ inspection grade. This is based on its recent inspection reports. An A+ in this category is one of the highest complements we can offer a facility. Our inspection ratings account for a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better scores in this area usually have few of these severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home was given a strong long-term care score as well. We awarded it one of our better scores in that category with a grade of B+. When facilities receive this type of grade in long-term care it is typically a good sign for resident care and suggests that the facility is well-staffed with nurses aids. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is much higher than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In addition, this facility also was given favorable short-term care scores in our assessment. In fact, we gave it one of our stronger scores in that category, with a grade of B. Our short-term care ratings are important for prospective residents looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates higher levels of skilled nursing. This means a broad range of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final datapoint we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

The final area we graded was nursing. We awarded this nursing home one of our better scores in this area, with a B. This nursing home ended up being very solid in each area we assessed. Our nursing rating weighs a handful of subcategories, but the paramount one is the number of nurse hours per patient per week. This particular nursing home provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.